The Joker makes his first big-screen appearance since 2008 in the upcoming Suicide Squad, but not all of the clown prince of crime made the final cut.
Writer-director David Ayer and actor Jared Leto opened up about footage that didn’t make the film, including more scenes with Leto’s Joker. Ayer said in an interview with Collider that over 10 minutes of material didn’t make the final cut, and that this was his own decision.
“Just because something’s cool and charismatic doesn’t mean it gets to survive in the final cut,” the filmmaker said while discussing the challenges of producing a feature. “The flow of the movie is the highest master.”
Leto strongly hinted to Telestar that Joker, who received less screen time than some expected, suffered the brunt of these cuts. He also expressed hope that these scenes might “see the light of day” one day.
These comments come amid news that Suicide Squad faced a troubled production, including a hasty screenwriting process, multiple editors and also saw Ayer and Warner Bros. clash over tone. Sources told The Hollywood Reporter that Warners enlisted Trailer Park, the company that had made the teaser for the film, to work on an alternate cut. But in comments to Collider, Ayers said the version that will be seen in theaters is his cut of the film.
“There’s no sort of parallel-universe version of the movie — the released movie is my cut,” he said.
The end result (which THR‘s Todd McCarthy calls “a puzzlingly confused undertaking”) has been largely panned by critics, with the film holding a 28 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
Last summer, Fantastic Four director Josh Trank famously blamed studio Fox for poor reviews for the film, tweeting (and later deleting), “a year ago I had a fantastic version of this” that would have received great reviews.
Suicide Squad opens Friday.
